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Students’ gardens at East Carolina Teachers Training School, 1914

In his 1910 report to the Board of Trustees, the president of East Carolina Teachers Training School, Robert Wright, requested land for a farm and dairy. He argued that “the public school teacher of the near future is going to be required to have a much more definite knowledge of farm life…” Ten years later, he was still requesting farmland, and between $150.00 and $500.00 dollars was being spent on the farm gardens annually.

At the time, students used part of the campus for their farm gardens. In 1915, student Christine Johnston wrote, “this year about the first of April the girls of our class were rather surprised to find themselves with hoes, garden rakes, and three prong cultivator hoes.” She planted radishes, turnips, beets, carrots, lettuce, onions, snap beans, and tomatoes. When she had to leave her garden for her commencement she sadly noted “my onions were large enough to eat and my snap beans only needed a few more days.”